Kayla Fu won her first career Ivy championship in the 100-yard freestyle on Feb. 22.
Credit: Courtesy of Penn AthleticsThe freshman is swimming fast and free.
While finishing in fifth place at the Ivy League Championships at Princeton, Penn women’s swimming and diving team has plenty to celebrate, thanks in part to a trio of new program records and a newly minted champion in freshman freestyle and butterfly specialist Kayla Fu.
The highlight of the weekend came on the final day of the championships when Fu clinched her first Ivy League title, winning the 100-yard freestyle event with a time of 48.61 — a huge victory for the freshman who bounced back after being seeded first and then just missing the 100 butterfly A final. This personal-best time is 1.24 seconds away from the school record, currently held by now-graduated NCAA champion Lia Thomas with a time of 47.37. Fu is the second Quaker in program history to hold the title in this event. This NCAA B cut time is impressive for the budding freshman, who also broke a school record in the 50 free during a preliminary session.
“What’s great about what Kayla did on Saturday and winning the 100 [free] is that she was not at 100%. … She woke up Friday morning, sick as a dog, and toughed it out on Friday,” coach Mike Schnur said. “[On Saturday], she went all out from yard one, and it was a great win. It was really fun to see. She deserves it. She works really hard and deserves everything she gets.”
Switching gears from sprint freestyle to distance freestyle, the Quakers were still victorious. Continuing the team’s legacy with distance freestyle dominance, the Quakers went 2-3 in the 1650 freestyle event, with junior freestyle and individual medley specialist Anna Moehn taking second with a time of 16:05.92 and junior freestyle specialist Sydney Bergstrom taking third with a time of 16:07.96. Moehn also took the silver in the 200 free and the 500 free, including a new personal best in the latter, proving that distance is only a matter of details.
“They’re both top 30 in the country right now in the 1650 [free] … and that mile was a terrific swim for both of those ladies,” Schnur said. “They trained together all year, they pushed each other, and the two of them … had amazing successes here.”
Fu and Moehn also participated in the 800 freestyle and 400 medley relays. In the former, the pair were joined by sophomore individual medley specialist Katya Eruslanova and sophomore freestyle specialist Jenna Jacobs to clinch the bronze with a time of 7:09.66. In the latter, Fu and Moehn linked up with sophomore butterfly and backstroke specialist Kate Levensten and senior breaststroke specialist Izzy Pytel to break another record in the 400 medley relay. While placing fifth with a time of 3:38.79, the quartet broke an 11-year school record set back in 2014.
“It’s always exciting to [break a record] as a team, as opposed to individually, and then I feel like we just kind of got the ball rolling from there,” Moehn said. “As the weekend went on, I feel like, especially that last day, we just kept performing better and better.”
The team — which bounces between the pools at the West Philadelphia YMCA and Drexel for practice due to the renovations at Sheerr Pool — has continued to improve with time. Eruslanova improved on her 2024 performance and made her debut in the A finals this year, finishing with a respectable fifth in the 200 individual medley — just 0.28 seconds shy of her program record set in December 2024 — and sixth in the 400 individual medley.
Other freshmen made a splashy Ivy championship debut as well. Freestyle and breaststroke specialist Amy Qin took seventh with 23.10 seconds in the B final of the 50 free, an impressive showing in an event that counts time down to the hundredths of a second. Butterfly specialist Maggie Hu nabbed two second-place finishes in the B finals: a 1:59.93 in the 200 butterfly and a 54.23 in the 100 butterfly, behind Fu. Both Qin and Hu played a crucial role in the relay performances of the team, showcasing their strong potential as they continue their careers with the Quakers.
“When you have an atmosphere where everybody works and pushes each other, great things can happen at the end of the season, even without our pool, you know, without doing any of our normal workouts,” Schnur said, describing the team’s dynamics. “They just refuse to feel sorry for themselves, and it paid off beautifully.”
“I think one thing that I love about our team was that we thrive in chaos,” Moehn added. “[Captains] Izzy Pytel, Keara McGowan, and Brooke Blom did a great job of, you know, fostering a ‘for the team’ culture, and then I think the rest of the team also did great in adapting and embracing that, and that, like overall, made the difficult season much easier.”
The Quakers maintained their fifth-place position from last year, tallying 990.5 points. However, the 125-point improvement from last year’s 865.5 tally should not go unnoticed. Thanks to a combination of standout freshmen and overall team improvements, the team was only eight points behind fourth-place finisher Brown. Reigning champion Princeton accomplished a three-peat victory, with Harvard and Yale once again rounding out the top three.
The weather may still be cold, but things are just heating up. A contingent of swimmers are off this weekend for the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships held in Annapolis, Md., and Moehn — possibly with some company — is set to appear at the NCAA Championships in Federal Way, Wash. in March.
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